I have to unplug and plug in my external speakers when I turn on my iMac

I recently moved my powered speakers to my iMac. I haven't done that since my previous iMac. When I turn on my computer, I don't get any audio until I unplug the plug. I plug it in again and the audio works fine through my speakers.

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I never had the problem before, with the same Acoustic Research Powered Partner 570 speakers. They use RCA jacks, but I just realized that I use a cable with RCA on one side and 3.5 mm jack on the other. This was plugged into my airport or into my iMac. But I'd like to plug it into cheap mixer that uses RCA, so I can just use straight RCA plugs. So I will experiment with plugging directly into my iMAC or using RCA plugs into my mixer, seeing what happens when my computer starts in the morning. (I don't have this problem with warm restarts).

I just tried this using a pair of Bose headphones. I turned off my iMac, plugged in the headphones, and turned on the iMac. No sound came out until I unplugged the headphones. When I plugged the headphones into the iMac again, sound came through the headphones. (When I unplugged them first, sound came out of the iMac). I bet I know the problem now though. I tried to get the karaoke program kJams to use my airport and installed Soundflower. I thought I had deleted it, but I see it's still in my settings. I can't find any file anywhere that I need to delete.

Ahhh..that may have something to do with it...especially the Aggregate device it created.

As always, we recommend that you have a Time Machine or other backup before messing with the files I will outline.

Navigate to Macintosh HD > System > Library > Extensions and delete any kext files with Soundflower in the name:

Soundflower.kext
SoundflowerSigned.kext

Only delete those with Soundflower in the name, and it will prompt you to authenticate to remove them. Once they are in the Trash, restart the Mac and see if Soundflower is still a choice in the Sound > Output preference pane.

There are actually two Soundflower.kext files in your screenshot, just below the highlighted com.Cycling74.Soundflowerbed folder. Maybe it installed in your hidden user Library folder instead. Click on them to highlight to see where they are located and remove them. The other files are OK to be left as is, unless you want to remove them too. Just make sure they have Soundflower in the name.

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